by WorldTribune Staff, June 11, 2018
Carter Page said the machinations employed by those targeting him in the Trump-Russia investigation are “becoming more understandable” following the indictment of James A. Wolfe, the intelligence official who leaked information to a reporter he was romantically involved with.
The federal indictment issued last week notes that Wolfe unwittingly met with a Russian spy in 2013 after receiving classified documents about Page labeled “secret”.
Wolfe, who was director of security with the Senate Intelligence Committee, provided the information to reporter Ali Watkins, who wrote a story about the documents for BuzzFeed on April 3, 2017. The New York Times cited the BuzzFeed story as one of the reasons it hired Watkins.
Following the BuzzFeed story, Page sent a letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican, and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, Virginia Democrat.
“I am increasingly coming to understand that these proceedings have thus far followed the precedent of prior show trials,” Page said in the letter.
The letter also said that it is a felony for someone to leak Page’s name as the person who was approached by spy Victor Podobnyy in New York in 2013.
In a June 10 report for The Washington Times, security correspondent Rowan Scarborough noted that “No charges were filed against Page, an energy investor who lived in Moscow. He believed Podobnyy to be who he said he was: a Russian diplomat posted at the United Nations.”
The indictment also alleges Wolfe leaked Page’s scheduled appearances before a Senate committee and a story that Page planned to invoke the Fifth Amendment instead of testifying, Scarborough’s report said. Page says that story was false.
“It had long been a mystery to me how MSNBC always miraculously knew about/was well staked-out for my Hart Senate Office Building visits, despite by best effort attempts to stay undercover,” Page tweeted on June 8. “I guess all these things are now becoming more understandable.”
The indictment against Wolfe, 57, said he had a romantic relationship with Watkins from December 2013, when she was an intern, to December 2017. The indictment charges him with three counts of lying when he denied leaking to reporters.
New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin called one of Watkins’ stories “Part of the orgy of leaks targeting President Trump.”
On reports that BuzzFeed and Politico knew Watkins was sleeping with her source, Goodwin said: “The admission is shocking yet not surprising, given the collapse of journalism standards in the age of Trump. Pure hatred of this president in newsrooms across America is blinding editors and reporters to basic fairness and glaring conflicts of interest.”
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